Badly Licked Bear

BA, The Evergreen State College, Visual Studies
MA, The Pacific Northwest College of Art, Critical Theory + Creative Research

Badly Licked Bear is or has been an arts administrator, community leader, writer, curator, student, artist, and educator. They are a “professional code switcher,” focused on interdisciplinary work based on deep observation and deep curiosity in a time of (INSERT CRISIS HERE).

Their work has been exhibited or performed at venues including MOCA, Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Human Resources Los Angeles, Machine Project, Cerritos College, The Wignall Museum, and less-institutional locales, like at an illegal bar in the Pacific Ocean. Their work is in the library collections, including those of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chicago Art Institute, Cypress College, and the Otis College of Art and Design.

Badly Licked Bear is the Logistics Super Auntie for the Auntie Sewing Squad, an 800-member, all-volunteer, mutual aid organization that manufactured and distributed PPE and other essential supplies during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. They are an occasional guest and contributor to the Museum of Home Video.

Awards and Honors

• Reciprocity Fellowship, 2020
• at land’s edge Fellowship, 2018

• Curator or organizer of ~200 exhibitions (2000-2010) and author and visual and performing artist (1997-present)

• “Fear, or….,” featured in DIS…MISS, forthcoming from MIT Press and LA Freewaves
• “Behind the Wheel of a Large Automobile (Filled With PPE),” featured in The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Car, and Racial Justice, UC Berkeley Press, 2021
• Dirty Air: Plague Angels, Torrance Art Museum, 2021
• HINDSIGHT: 2020 VISION, Cypress College, 2020
• THERE ARE NO BAD IDEAS ALL OF OUR IDEAS ARE BAD, self-published, 2019
• “Sunken City,” Coastal/Border, The Getty Foundation and Angels Gate Cultural Center, 2017
• History of San Pedro Punk,The City of Los Angeles and Angels Gate Cultural Center, 2007

• Faculty member at Chapman University, Cypress College, and The Evergreen State College
• Former Visual Arts Director, Angels Gate Cultural Center
• Consultant for theatrical and film productions
• Co-Founder: Alternative Pedagogy Island, The San Pedro Film Society, the Los Angeles Needle Exchange